Transform climate anxiety into mindful, impactful pro-environmental action.
Through a series of experiential sessions, this course supports the development of inner awareness, resilience, and emotional clarity to help you engage meaningfully with environmental challenges. Guided by mindfulness and whole-person practices, you’ll explore how self-awareness, systems thinking, and collaboration can translate into thoughtful, impactful action.
The curriculum emphasizes the power of small changes to influence larger systems and invites you to deepen your connection with yourself, others, and the natural world. By the end of the course, you’ll be equipped with practical tools and renewed purpose to design a personal or collective initiative that contributes to a more sustainable future.
Course Overview
Week 1 | Sept 27, 2025: Getting Started and The Awake Mind
Week 2 | Oct 3, 2025: The Intelligence of Emotions
Week 3 | Oct 10, 2025: My Calling & Contribution
Week 4 | Oct 17, 2025: Self-efficacy and Systems Thinking
Week 5 | Oct 24, 2025: Collaboration to Solve Complex Problems
Week 6 | Nov 1, 2025: Action and Integration
About Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a meditation technique that increases one’s focus on the present by cultivating moment-to-moment awareness. This can lead to a sense of improved health and well-being. Mindful meditation cultivates awareness of the present moment through formal practices (e.g., focus on the breath, body scan, gentle yoga, sitting meditation, and walking meditation), as well as informally applying these practices to daily activities (e.g., eating, working, communicating, etc.).
Throughout the teachings, participants are encouraged to develop the following attitudes:
- Letting go: Noticing the impulse to grasp at the pleasant and resist the unpleasant, and instead nurturing a stance of non-attachment.
- Non-judging: Observing your own experience as an impartial witness.
- Patience: Allowing things to unfold in their own time, without rushing, by opening to the fullness of the moment.
- Beginner’s mind: Seeing things as they really are, as if for the first time, free of expectations from past experience.
- Trust: Developing a fundamental trust in yourself by honoring your thoughts, feelings and intuition.
- Non-striving: Releasing your meditation goals (aside from being yourself) and adopting a “non-doing” attitude.
- Acceptance: Developing a willingness to perceive things as they truly are in the present moment.
Studies have shown that practicing mindfulness can significantly reduce chronic pain, lower blood pressure, boost the immune system and enhance sleep. In addition, research supports a decrease in stress, anxiety and depression. Preliminary neuroimaging studies also suggest that regular mindfulness practice can enhance structures of the brain associated with focus, learning, memory, executive function and emotion regulation.
View more mindfulness classes at the Samueli Institute.
Registration & Acknowledgement
Please register at the button below to join the class.
Please read the Acknowledgement of Risk:
Participating in mindfulness programs has been shown to have many benefits. However, it’s important to take a few precautions.
Physically, gentle yoga may be incorporated. If you are unable to engage in a stretch due to a physical limitation, please let your instructor know so alternative postures may be offered. You may also forgo any practice you feel may be uncomfortable or unsafe.
Emotionally, while many people experience stress reduction, there may be times they feel more stressed. This can happen as awareness grows and they begin to understand more clearly the stress they are facing.
At times, it may not be the best time to enroll, or participants may need additional support (e.g., a therapist) during the program, especially when one or more of the following are present:
• Substance abuse (including early stages of recovery)
• Panic disorder or PTSD
• Acute depression
• Self-harming behaviors (e.g., cutting) or suicidal thoughts
• Untreated psychosis
• Recent loss, or
• Anything else that might be relevant
If any of the above pertain to you, please email Jessica Drew de Paz, Director of Mindfulness Programs, at drewj@hs.uci.edu to schedule a brief confidential call to determine the best course of action.
In Partnership With UC San Diego Centers for Integrative Health
This Mindful Sustainability class is provided in partnership with UC San Diego Centers for Integrative Health. The class will be led by Mirjam Luthe, MA, a mindfulness instructor at the Samueli Institute (see profile below), and Shannon Jordan, MA.
Shannon Jordan, MA is a certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher who integrates nature and environmental awareness into her facilitation. As someone who cares deeply about the health of our planet, people, and ecosystems, Shannon completed the MBSR Eco-Awareness pilot program through the Bess Family Foundation, an MIT course in Sustainability in Industry, certification as a Mindfulness Based Sustainable Transformation teacher through the Inner Green Deal. She serves as mindfulness faculty for the UC wide climate course initiative, is a certified Search Inside Yourself teacher (the mindfulness and emotional intelligence program originated at Google), a senior facilitator with Potential Project’s teaching network, and provides holistic leadership development and 1:1 support through her work as an executive coach. Shannon has a passion for sustainable design, qigong, yoga, and global travel.
Please direct any questions to Adrianne Ong, Program Coordinator, at adrianmo@hs.uci.edu.
